Demo Feedback - the essay

[Dart]

Let me start by saying that I really liked this demo. It feels great for a proof of concept, a way to get some feedback and garner interest for a larger release. Combat is intricate enough to be more than just "stab the guy", and the terrain has some genuine impact. That being said there are criticisms to be had, which I hope that my expressing will provide some valuable insight as to what could be tweaked down the line.

As of writing, I have 116 hours of legitimate playtime, a fair bit of that solely done for the sake of experimentation in combat to learn how things work. Now, on to the review– SPOILERS AHEAD!

Combat

Intricate Mechanics

Simply put, the combat is rather complex to a new audience. As someone with experience to the genre and this style of game-- notably, some in-depth understanding of Dungeons & Dragons-- I was able to piece together how things were supposed to work through some amount of trial & error, and many comparisons to the mechanics of DnD. Most players will not have any foothold of the system, however, and will simply become frustrated.

Even for a veteran of the genre, some of the mechanics are simply confusing at first. Notably, certain things will not make sense until a second reading of the tutorial system: the Charge attack with its use of Impact die, and the Difficulty Threshold mechanic. The latter I could only comprehend by relating it to DnD’s Armor Class. Truth be told, I still don’t know what the defensive stance does, or how to actively use lucky charms!

The Tutorial

The largest of all problems in the first introduction to the game is that the tutorial battles either do not give a true fight or do not ease you into it. Most pressingly, the battles both end prematurely. In the battle against Billy, you are taught how to attack, and that is all of it. But rather than allowing the fight to continue, giving the player time to solidify their understanding of the basics of combat, the battle simply ends. Along with the confusing introduction of Wounds before health, and the various other things in the UI, it makes for a shallow lesson that leaves more questions than answers.

The Hammer also pushes these issues further, pushing a player unfamiliar with the combat system into a situation that poses a substantial danger. I read the tutorial and knew what I was doing, only for Barry to be spontaneously Smashed and killed on the second turn. It was at this point that I fully began to utilize the Skills/Combos… but those are only introduced to the player in the final fight of the demo, unless they specifically read through the entire rulebook as I did. Once I did manage to feel as if I had a solid grasp of the system, the battle was suddenly ended by the arrival of the guards, disallowing me to put my theories of the gameplay into practice.

Balancing

I rather enjoy the terrain and positioning-based actions, and feel they provide a great layer of strategy. However, it must be said that barrels are a little bit too strong at the moment: Billy, without any upgrades, was able to deal fourteen damage (yes, 14, as in a common enemy’s entire healthbar) in a single push of a barrel. The second to final fight was made trivial when I told him to kick a barrel into the two lined-up enemies, killing them instantaneously.

Apart from that, I honestly think the balancing of the combat is well-designed– though Strength does seem dominant during the demo, likely due to a lack of specialized weapons for those characters based on Dexterity.

UI

Characters

To be brutally honest, the UI when looking at a character and their attributes is a mess. Character screens are an organized chaos, but still a chaos. Now that I have learned about each of the mechanics, I know what each spot of the menu does, but when I first opened the character screen to figure out some basic statistics such as health or attack power, I was greeted with a variety of differing things of which I had no understanding. The list of weapons on the right side stood out as being incredibly overwhelming, in particular.

If I had to propose a fix, it would be to simply greyout the things that the player does not have access to at the current moment, revealing them over time as more mechanics get introduced. That way, the overall experience does not seem as cluttered and esoteric as it does currently upon a first glance.

Movement

Holding down the mouse button to finalize an option is fine, but the current formatting of movement is clunky and difficult to use. At the moment, you can click on a tile to add that to what I am going to call a “plan”, allowing you to pick a specific way to move that is important when enemies may counterattack when circling around them. However, this mechanic is not well explained, leading to a few situations where I found myself unable to act as I wanted solely due to a lack of knowledge about the interface. What most people will do initially will be to click on the end tile, letting the automatic pathfinding do the work, and the system of click + hold does work for those simple movements, But when the player needs to make complex choices of pathing– a particularly prevalent issue given how well the terrain and positioning are implemented– clicking on each individual tile is tedious. Additionally, having to hold down the button feels slow.

My suggestion to make the movement and combat in general feel more fluid and intuitive would be to introduce two features: click-and-drag movement wherein by sliding your mouse or holding the direction on the joystick will select several tiles for you at a time, and double-click to confirm. The latter would be best implemented as an opt-in feature in the settings menu.

Dice

I have no problems with the use of dice, and I feel they work well. But for the love of all that is good, let us know what the different sides are! Probability is so terribly important in this game, such as for Impact Die: the rulebook says the die is 6-sided, but only gives four possible results! That means that two sides have symbols that are already present, but which symbols are repeated and thus more likely to appear? Tell me, please, which ones!?

Overworld

Points of no return

A recurring problem that I found in this game was frequent points of no return, wherein after doing something oftentimes innocuous it became impossible to travel a certain route. This happened many, many times: before Hammer, before the first band of soldiers, after hopping the broken bridge, after the second band of soldiers… many times. This would not be an issue if it were not so difficult to tell which direction is optional and which progressed the main story, or if there were a longer period in which one could retrace their steps.

The single biggest source of aggravation regarding this is with Hammer’s quarters. After talking to the leper and receiving his information, I spoke with the rat man nearby thinking that I would either find Hammer’s quarters nearby or that I would be able to backtrack later to investigate. However, once I talked to the rat man, I was unable to go to the quarters, even after the subsequent forced encounter was completed. With that still on the list of core objectives at the top left, the escape was tainted by the sour taste of knowing that I missed out on what was evidently a rather important option.

Loot

This is a nitpick, but most sources of loot in the overworld are seemingly inconsequential and blend into the background. Though that is likely a design choice, making treasure feel more “hidden”, what it results in is a sort of tedium running across every wall to find whatever might be stashed away within yet another random barrel. Having the radius in which it becomes possible to discern what is treasure and what is simply atmosphere would simply be a nice quality of life feature.

Afterthoughts

To the crew: thank you!

I know that most of this review is criticism, and I know that it can be disheartening to hear. But I want to make it clear that I do not write this post for the sake of being negative. In fact, this lengthy review is a testament to a completely opposite sentiment: I think this game looks amazing, and thank you for all the effort and care you put into it! It is clear to me from the nuance of the gameplay and the sheer amount of soul in the characters and visuals that this is a game with true potential. That is why I put the effort into the examination and cataloging of any issues I had in my time playing, because I want to see as the gem that is Flint: Treasure of Oblivion receives its final few layers of polish.

As I said at the start of the post (lengthy as it is I would not blame you for having forgotten), I am familiar with the essence of this type of game. Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Dungeons and Dragons, Baldur’s Gate– all of them are games that I truly appreciate, and all of them are games that I see reflected in yours. So I sincerely hope that whatever rough edges there are will be ironed out, making this an experience that more and more people love! I, of course, will be watching with great interest to see how this game grows even better.

[Vashalgrim]

Came here to write a review similar to this, but I think Dart wrote it better than I would have. Thanks and +1

[Falaris]

I would add that early game the game feels clunkier than it is due to interface parts being off; this was rather off-putting. It was fairly difficult to navigate the prison area and find some items - primarily because a lot of open area wasn't clickable, so you couldn't move there.

I also wonder if the click length in the first tutorial part was way longer than in later parts; it felt that way. It was long enough that I gave up clicking the first few tries to get Flint to move.

The bit where you were waiting for the french captain.. it was really hard to tell what you were supposed to do, I couldn't click anyone, I couldn't move except for short jerks, the subordiante kept saying confirmations to stuff I couldn't see (ultrawide screen support seems iffy, thing might be cut off. Or it's just supposed to be that way.). I alt-tab'd out for an eternity and when I got back my character was zooming all around the screen, and nothing happened until I stole the pipe.

Also.. the game has great humor, some piratey references, it uses archaic terms accurately (which is almost unheard of!), the graphics are great - it looks pretty amazing, really.

But that early tutorial REALLY needs a quality pass.

[Marik]

Said most everything I wanted to in much better words! I too felt very frustrated on a lot of the interface, UI, combat and what each did or how to access (some I realized later weren't open to use at beginning for tutorial and just weren't working yet). Definitely needs a thorough step by step tutorial on the systems and how things are used, and what things mean, interface and actions, etc.

But the game had an appeal and felt myself wanting to keep going and play it and it intrigued me, so there is something there. Just lot of confusion will put off many.

I never did figure out how to use the barrels but knew they were there to use in some way.

Also not mentioned but other posts have, the ability to move camera view around in combat screen, but not during the main map movement and searching was just jarring. You can get by without it, but just felt frustrating.

Anyway, think you might have a hidden gem that with a lot of polish could really be a decent game.

Marik

[Dragonborn]

I did not understand the battle at all. Flint would not even move the instructions say long hold left click and he would just stand there. Got to the point I gave up and left the game. Will wait for better instructions, better UI or skip game completely.

[Marison]

I wholeheartedly agree with all of this!

What I would like to add: when I started using a Controller, the UI works A LOT better. You can tell it has been optimized for it, and KB/M was only an afterthought. When you are walking around, you even get a small vibration when you discover some loot, for example. Also the long-press to move feels a lot more inutitive this way. Also: you get a text tooltip for every new loot you pick up.

One other thing: this game does not work properly on an ultrawide monitor. The Ui becomes messed up. I would love to just have an option to play with black bars on the sides at least, but this is not possible.

Also: it seems that there is still some sound design missing. Start and end of battle should come with some kind of fanfare. Combat also feels a bit sterile still.

[D-Fuse]

As far as attacked balance adjustment is concerned I would add that killing an enemy when dropping on him from above systematically (happened afer escaping the prison on the path to the city) I felt was exaggerated.

As far as loot is concerned, I feel the items found here and there should correspond more to the context: For instance, finding the dice luck card in a box on a street feels unrealistic, I wouldn't be suprised to find one in a house in a library or table top.

[Lucky]

Yeah I wholeheartedly agree, especially with combos I didn't realize you can use those just at turn 1.

[Taltos]

Its rather disheartening that Dart put that much thought into his feedback, and there is no response form the developer.

[Anthony Microids]

Hey,

We'd like to thank you all for your feedback! Be sure that your suggestions and feedback has been shared to our team!